An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale shook northern Haiti on Sat., Oct. 6, 2018, at 8:11 p.m. Haitian authorities say 14 people died and close to 200 were injured, but those figures are expected to rise.

Dozens of homes were damaged and a few large structures, including a church, a school, and an auditorium, wholly or partially collapsed.

The epicenter of the quake was in the ocean, 12 miles north of Port-de-Paix, northwest Haiti’s largest city. Damage was also reported in the large town of Gros Morne, and at least one death occurred on La Tortue Island.

A map showing the epicenter of the Oct. 6, 2018 earthquake of Ile de la Tortue, near Port-de-Paix.

Another weaker 5.2 earthquake occurred at 4:00 p.m. on Sun., Oct. 7, some 10 miles north of Port-de-Paix. It was 11 times less powerful than the quake the day before.

The meagre Western media coverage afforded The Great March of Return's beginnings in March has now all but disappeared, so those in Canada relying on the CBC and other corporate-interested news sources may be surprised to learn, the Great March trudges on; just as does the wanton murder of its defenseless, civilian participants.

Over the weekend, Israel's military killed seven more Palestinians, while injuring hundreds; at least 90 of those being wounded by live-bullet fire.

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry says, 163 Gazans have died, with more than 20,000 being treated for injuries in Gaza's threadbare hospitals.

But, it's not only the Canadian media derelict in its duty; when it comes to Gaza, Canada's government, including opposition parties in the House of Commons, remains almost entirely silent.

Jonathan Kuttab is a human rights lawyer practicing in East Jerusalem. He is the co-founder of the organizations: Al Haq, the first international human rights legal organization in Palestine; The Palestinian Center for the Study of Non-Violence (now Non-Violence International); and The Mandela Institute for Prisoners. He is also a founding director of Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement pour une Paix Juste, a Canadian-based international law/human rights not-for-profit organization.

Jonathan is currently on a cross-Canada speaking tour. He spoke last night in Comox, and will be in Victoria tonight at 7pm presenting, 'The future of Jerusalem in the time of Trump' at UVic's David Turpin Building.

Jonathan Kuttab in the first half.

And; though Canada daily abrogates its international treaty-mandated duty to protect the human rights of Gazans, it has not exited the World stage altogether. The country boasting, "a consistently strong voice for the protection of human rights and the advancement of democratic values..." has adopted, along with its trade partners, the modern siege method, imposing economic sanctions against the democratically elected government of Venezuela.

Most Canadians would doubtless blanch at the hypocrisy of their nation's position, if only they knew the depth of its profundity. But, there again is where the CBC and its corporate media cohorts come in - or fail to do so.

Alison Bodine is Coordinator of the Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice's Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. The long-time antiwar and social justice activist is too a researcher and writer for the Fire This Time! monthly newspaper.

Alison Bodine and Canada as democracy's arsonist in Venezuela in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin for some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Jonathan Kuttab and the future of Palestine at a crossroads.

It might seem cavalier for an academically credentialed anthropologist to assert political influence on the population he is supposed to be studying; however, Goette-Luciak’s activities fit within a long tradition.

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA — (Investigation) The Guardian, The Washington Post, the BBC and NPR have assigned an American anthropologist with no previous journalistic experience to cover the crisis in Nicaragua.

The novice reporter, named Carl David Goette-Luciak, has published pieces littered with falsehoods that reinforce the opposition’s narrative promoting regime change while relying almost entirely on anti-Sandinista sources.

An investigation for MintPress reveals that Goette-Luciak has forged intimate ties to the opposition, and has essentially functioned as its publicist under journalistic cover. Having claimed to work in the past as an anthropologist and “human rights defender,” Goette-Luciak operated side-by-side with activists from a U.S.-backed opposition party known as the Sandinista Renovation Movement, or MRS.

As we will see in this investigation, U.S. government-funded organizations have supplied the MRS with millions of dollars worth of election assistance, and continue to fund its activists by funding their NGO’s and social media training.

Moscow - At 19:50 on Thursday evening Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK), one of the largest circulation newspapers in Russia, published an announcement from Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin.

“The Russian President’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the Kremlin will check information from the investigation of Bellingcat and The Insider on suspects of the Salisbury poisoning of the Skripals where it is claimed that Ruslan Boshirov, accused by London of involvement, is a member of GRU, Hero of Russia, Colonel Anatoly Chepiga.

“In the words of Peskov, in the Kremlin [officials] intend to check the lists of recipients from the President of this title. He added that the official position is still unchanged. And it was announced by the President, and the suspects themselves.”

When Peskov claimed the Kremlin “will [sic] check information from the investigation of Bellingcat”, more than twenty-four hours had already passed since he had first seen the Bellingcat report on Boshirov and Chepiga. That Peskov did not already have the GRU file on Chepiga, the Hero of Russia list, and the relationship between Chepiga and Boshirov is impossible.

The US government’s decision to slash funds provided to the United Nations agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is part of a new American-Israeli strategy aimed at redefining the rules of the game altogether. As a result, UNRWA is experiencing its worst financial crisis. The gap in its budget is estimated at around $217 million, and is rapidly increasing.

Aside from future catastrophic events that would result in discontinuing services and urgent humanitarian aid to five million refugees registered with UNRWA, the impact of the US callous decision is already reverberating in many refugee camps across the region.

Currently, UNRWA has downgraded many of its services: laying off many teachers, reducing staff and working hours at various clinics. Nearly 40 percent of all Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, a country that is already overwhelmed by a million Syrian refugees who sought shelter there because of the grinding and deadly war in their own country.

In their obsession for regime change, Ottawa is backing talk of an invasion of Venezuela. And the NDP is enabling Canada’s interventionist policy.

Last week 11 of the 14 member states of the anti-Venezuelan “Lima Group” backed a statement distancing the alliance from “any type of action or declaration that implies military intervention” after Organization of American States chief Luis Almagro stated:

“As for military intervention to overthrow the Nicolas Maduro regime, I think we should not rule out any option … diplomacy remains the first option but we can’t exclude any action.”

Canada, Guyana and Colombia refused to criticize the head of the OAS’ musings about an invasion of Venezuela.

In recent weeks there has been growing tension on the border between Colombia and Venezuela. Some believe Washington is pushing for a conflict via Colombia, which recently joined NATO.

Last summer Donald Trump threatened to invade Venezuela. “We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary,” the US President said.

When Canada became a war-making nation, the nation's elite worried about public reaction. They fretted over a cover story; something clever and convincing, along the lines of a national mythos to quiet the conscience of a citizenry made uncomfortable by the truth of the horror and suffering being inflicted on distant others. As it turned out, their troubled nights were wasted.

It seems no damning deed done can shake Canadians' indomitable self-congratulation, nor dim their ineffably lofty self-regard. Though the richest nation in Africa be destroyed, creating a chaos the likes of which has not been writ since the time of Pharaohs, Canada and its paragons bray of their part played - as if heroes.

Yves Engler is a Montréal-based activist, essayist, and author. His articles appear at Dissident Voice, The Palestine Chronicle, Rabble.ca, and Pacific Free Press among other places. Some of his nine book titles include: 'A Propaganda System—How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation', 'Canada in Africa — 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation', and 'The Ugly Canadian — Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy'.

Yves’ new book, 'Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada' is freshly off the press and tries, as reviewer David Swanson notes, "to provide 10% of the explanation for why many Canadians suffer under the delusion that their nation’s government is a benevolent force in the world..."

Yves Engler in the first half.

And; Canada's complicity in international criminality is not limited to the destruction, with NATO compatriots, of countries like Libya or the Former Yugoslavia, it too works diligently to undermine democracy in countries like Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Honduras. And, even as it vociferously champions human rights best practices, Canada tacitly supports the oppressive military occupations conducted by friends America, Britain, and Israel.

Michael J. Carpenter is a post-doctoral fellow with the Borders in Globalization project at the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria whose dissertation explored the theory and practice of civic struggle - struggle also known as "nonviolent direct action", "civil resistance", and "people power." His work is focused especially in the context of the Middle East, and Palestine in particular.

Micheal J. Carpenter and taking exception to human rights exceptionalism in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Yves Engler and the dark underside of the Great White North.

With neo-colonialism's second wave currently rolling across Africa, it serves well to remember, for one People the first wave never crested.

Western Sahara is home to the Saharawi, who have fought, and continue to fight for their independence, first from Spanish, then Moroccan occupiers.

Their self-declared Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic is recognized by more than fifty of nations, and yet they still suffer the most extreme deprivations, unable to profit from the wealth stolen from their ancestral lands.

Sirocco: Winds of Resistance is a Canadian-made film about the role Canada plays in the colonization of Western Sahara and how that effects the lives of two Saharawi women and their grandmothers. The BC premier will screen next Friday, September 28th at Cafe Simpatico, 1923 Fernwood Rd.

And; whether the Panic of 1907, Wall Street Crash of 1929, or the recently remembered, Financial Crisis of 2008, Autumn has historically been unkind to market capitalists. While those cyclical reversals, or "haircuts", visited through the vagaries of the stock market on investors may be mere "bumps in the road" for the monied class, for the rest of us those crashes can mean life-altering disaster. So why then do we abide this financial catastrophe creating system continue; is there no other way!?

The folk behind the 13th Annual Victoria Anarchist Bookfair think there is, and as ever their Bookfair presents workshops and speakers on a wide range of topics. The collective says, "We seek to challenge colonial attitudes, introduce anarchism to the public, foster dialogue between various political traditions, and create radical, inclusive, anti-oppressive spaces."

Jon Valentine is a long-time volunteer with the Victoria chapter of Food Not Bombs, members of the 13th Anarchist Bookfair collective, kicking off this weekend in Fernwood at 1240 Gladstone. Jon is too a dedicated social activist and two-time Victoria candidate for City Council.

Jon Valentine and a festival of anarchy in Fernwood in the second half.

And; Victoria horticulturalist and greentrepreneur extraordinaire, Christina Nikolic at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to get up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Terry Wolfwood and Western Sahara's winds of resistance.

Like many, my first thought at the interview of Boshirov and Petrov – which apparently are indeed their names – is that they were very unconvincing. The interview itself seemed to be set up around a cramped table with a poor camera and lighting, and the interviewer seemed pretty hopeless at asking probing questions that would shed any real light.

I had in fact decided that their story was highly improbable, until I started seeing the storm of twitter posting, much of it from mainstream media journalists, which stated that individual things were impossible which were, in fact, not impossible at all.

The first and most obvious regards the weather on 3 and 4 March. It is in fact absolutely true that, if the two had gone down to Salisbury on 3 March with the intention of going to Stonehenge, they would have been unable to get there because of the snow. It is therefore perfectly possible that they went back the next day to try again; and public transport out of Salisbury was still severely disrupted, and many roads closed, on 4 March. Proof of this is not at all difficult to find.

Fears of a broader, perhaps global, war spreading from the fires of Syria's seven-plus year conflict are currently being fanned by western media.

The focus of its interest this time is in Idlib province, where previously defeated fighters were allowed by the Syrian Arab Army to flee.

As it has in the past, the press is propagating an "Assad chemical weapons attack" narrative, used once in East Ghouta to unsuccessfully fool president Obama into escalation, and again in Khan Sheikoun, prompting president Trump into a retaliatory cruise missile barrage, (ostensibly to protect Syrian civilians).

The truth though is, the war fomented and fueled by Trump's predecessor has always been about regime change, and that failed effort remains the impetus behind all the American coalition's actions so far, and whichever others are to come.

Roger Annis is a longtime socialist and trade union activist. He’s a prolific essayist, whose website, A Socialist in Canada covers a broad swath of topics and issues from a social justice and peace perspective. He’s followed western regime change efforts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Syria and contends, when it comes to foreign affairs, whether Trudeau, or Trump, May or Macron, the policies are indistinguishable.

Roger Annis in the first half.

And; those following the career of Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton will be unsurprised by his recent threats against and disparagement of the International Criminal Court. But the vitriol of his attack, with its denial of allowing US soldiers answer for alleged torture and other war crimes committed in Afghanistan, and denunciation of efforts by Palestine to get the ICC to indict Israel for its crimes against civilians is instructive; touching as it does the rawest of the New American Century's nerves, exceptionalism.

David Swanson is a peace and political justice activist, journalist, radio host, and author. He’s also director of WorldBeyondWar.org whose annual confab Designing a World Beyond War: Legalizing Peace kicks off this week in Toronto. David's book titles include: ‘War No More: The Case for Abolition,’ ‘When the World Outlawed War,’ ‘War Is a Lie,’ and ‘The Military Industrial complex at 50’ among others.

You can find out more at: #NoWar2018. David also blogs at Let’s Try Democracy (DavidSwanson.org), WarIsACrime.org, and hosts the public affairs program, Talk Nation Radio.

David Swanson and designing a World beyond war in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Roger Annis and the accelerating pressures on regimes still resisting "change."

The American coup machine has taken its efforts to topple Nicaraguan democracy to a higher level. Addressing the UN Security Council yesterday, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley said, "With each passing day Nicaragua travels further down a familiar path. It is a path that Syria has taken. It is a path that Venezuela has taken."

That "path" to which the Ambassador refers in other quarters is called national sovereignty and self-determination; something anathema to the United States now in Nicaragua, as it has been, as Haley reminds, in Venezuela, a country currently suffering a vicious financial sanctions attack, and in Syria, a place America has done its utmost to destroy, and even now occupies militarily.

But it's not just hawks like Nikki Haley gunning for Nicaragua; in a cunning bit of wordplay, Leila Swan of Human Rights Watch slays two recalcitrant Latin American birds in one sentence saying, "It's hard not to think about the early stages of Venezuela’s crisis while watching the brutal crackdown unfolding in Nicaragua." So what's really going on?

And; Britain's prime minister addressed the nation's Parliament yesterday saying she had solved the Skripal poisoning case. Her accompanying presentation featured photos and maps and other visual aids, but contained little a prosecutor could use to justify charges being brought, let alone the actual evidence needed in court to secure a conviction. But no matter, the case is meant to tried in the court of public opinion, an arena Theresa May is desperate to "court" these days.

John Helmer is a long-time, Moscow-based journalist, author, and essayist whose website, Dances with Bears is the only Russian-based news bureau “independent of single national or commercial ties.” He’s also a former political science professor who’s served as advisor to governments on three continents, and regularly lectures on Russian topics.

Helmer’s book titles include: ‘Uncovering Russia,’ ‘Urbanman: The Psychology of Urban Survival,’ ‘Bringing the War Home: The American Soldier in Vietnam and After,’ and ‘Drugs and Minority Oppression’, among others. His latest article, 'The New Allegations in the Skripal Case and the Standard of Proof' takes aim at the latest media muddling of the Skripal case.

John Helmer and trying days for England's Queen of Hearts in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Daniel Kovalik and the plot to attack Nicaragua and vilify Daniel Ortega.